I wrote this story for a contest here on Wattpad and it is one of those stories that makes my cry every time I read it. I hope you enjoy reading it!
The evening was dark and gloomy, much like it had been on the same day three years ago. The sky was covered by dense, gray clouds, hiding the sun from his view. The houses around him barely had any lights on, drowning the street in the unusual darkness of the day. He kept on walking aimlessly, kicking a rock here and there. His hands were buried deep inside his pockets and his hair were dishevelled owing to the infrequent but strong gusts of air.
Three years ago, he had wandered through the same streets for hours. Everything about today was eerily similar to that day with the exception of his mood. He remembered clearly the pain and anguish he had felt that day. No matter how much he tried, he could never rid himself of those feelings; of those memories. In contrast to that day, he felt numb today. His face was stoic; devoid of any form of emotion. He felt a burden pressing down on his shoulders and a void at the place his heart should've possessed.
He passed by a familiar single story house. The walls had multiple cracks visible to any passer by and the paint was chipped in the far right corner. The black-coloured door was worn out, as if it had seen a number of storms and had survived them all, but the scars had remained. In its driveway stood a rusty red ford truck which must've belonged to the man who now occupied the house. The building was familiar, as its previous residents had been. He thought he knew those people; he had considered them his own. How wrong he had been; how naive. The house was yet another thing that now reminded him of his past; a past that he wanted to forget.
A single drop of rain fell on his forehead and slipped down his face. He remembered how he had cried that day; his tears had mixed with the falling drops of rain. Again, there was one difference between today and that fateful day; his eyes failed to shed any tears.
The emptiness that had consumed him, the grief that him crushed him on that day as he had stared down at the raised ground a couple of feet ahead of him. That piece of ground held the body of his little sister; the person he loved the most in the world. For years she had ben the light that illuminated his life in the darkest of times. She had been the pleasant sight for his sore eyes. Ever since his mother had died and his father had married another woman, he had taken it upon himself to look after his baby sister.
He was seventeen when his father moved to another country due to his job. He never got to know where he went, just that his father was no longer in the same country. A few months after his departure, his step-mother had decided that she'd had enough of him and his ten-year old sister and had practically threw them out of the house; his father's house. He would never be able to forget that day. How people changed within a few months astounded him. That was the day he learnt a valuable lesson; never trust anyone in this world. Hidden beneath those nice facades were cruel, merciless creatures who didn't deserve to be called humans.
'Life is full of surprises,' he thought bitterly. He was filled with distrust and bitterness after being kicked out of his own house, but the actual hatred for the world, for life and its surprises filled him after he found out about his sister's illness.
They had been living in a run down apartment for the last year or so when one day he returned from his work to find his sister lying on the ground, her breathing shallow. The sense of fear that had gripped his heart at that instant was something he had never felt before. He rushed her to the hospital, but as fate would have it, he was a little too late. They told him she had rat-bite fever, which if left untreated, could be fatal. They told him that she must've had it for a few days for it to cause her death. At that moment he wondered how he could've missed her deteriorating health. Was he that oblivious of her well-being? His lack of attention had cost him his sister's life. He had failed to provide a better home for her and his failure had led to her death in the form of a rat-bite. Wasn't it a bit harsh of a punishment for his oblivion? Hadn't they already suffered enough?
He recalled standing by his sister's lifeless body, as a person prepared her grave. He remembered how heavy his arms had felt as he lowered her in the grave and hid her from the world forever. He had spent a good few hours just standing there, clutching his sister's broken baby doll in his hands and crying silently into the dreary night. He had been alone in raising her and there he was, alone as ever as he bid farewell to her. How many times she had asked him about their father. She was an innocent child who never understood why their father never visited them. How could he have answered her childish inquisitions? She felt so clueless in this world that she left it behind, not even trying to search for the answers anymore.
It was a few days ago, almost three years after her death, that he came across his father. Apparently, he had returned for his children. His father wanted to take them back with him, back to his house. He could only stare at him blankly, as his father continued on about how he never wanted them to leave the house in the first place. His wife had done everything without letting him know. He watched as his father begged him to come back. But more importantly, he watched the horror that overtook his father's features when he shoved the broken doll, his sister's and now his prized possession, in his father's hands and spoke aloud about her death for the first time. He could recollect his words quite clearly.
"She's dead," he said in a blank, emotionless voice. "This is the only thing she had to play with all throughout her childhood. I couldn't give her anything else except for food which too, was scarce. She had stopped asking me about you almost half a year before her death. So, I politely suggest you to move on with your life and forget you ever had two more children, because a big part of me died along with my sister." With that said, he picked up the doll that had slipped from his father's still hands and walked away without another word. He didn't bother telling him when his daughter died or where she was buried. In his opinion, his father didn't deserve to visit his baby sister's grave.
The clouds had let all their water go, as the rain fell heavier with every passing second. He looked up at the sky, not knowing what he was expecting to see up there. But he kept looking, searching for something unknown, something unseen. When he found nothing, he closed his eyes as a lone tear slipped out of his eye and mixed with the numerous drops of rain. It was as if a dam had broken after three years, letting every single emotion slip away. He sobbed, falling on his knees as he held his head in his hands. He let out all his grief for his mother's and then his sister's death; all the frustration and anger he had for his father.
'I thought he knew what we must've gone through after mum's death, after his second marriage and after being thrown out of our own house. I thought he understood our pain, our suffering. I just thought he knew...'
~*~
